When Carrie was 8 years old, her parents moved the family to Montclair, New Jersey where various black intellectuals visited, including the poet Langston Hughes.

Her second husband organized the Black Progressive Democratic Party after World War II and claimed victory for electing moderate Olin Johnson over segregationist Strom Thurmond during Massive Resistance in the 1960s.

[4] McCray wrote about the racial and gender tensions she experienced,[5] including frightening telephone calls the Allen family received after moving into a white neighborhood in New Jersey, and her travels in the South in the 1960s with Indira, an Indian friend, particularly visiting a cousin at Auburn University.

Ota Benga Under My Mother's Roof was her last collection of poems (edited by Kevin Simmonds) and published by University of South Carolina Press.

In October 2007, a theatrical adaptation of the collection (with original music by Simmonds) debuted at the Columbia Museum of Art, with McCray as narrator.